Betrayal In The Song Of Roland

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A warrior bravely facing down a one hundred thousand pagan army until death: Count Roland from The Song of Roland is an exciting character from france’s oldest epic. The Song of Roland is a complex tale of betrayal: Two betrayals are played out simultaneously in the story (Goldin, 1332). When Charlemagne, king of the franks, is about to lay siege on the city of Saracens the cities king, Marsilion, plots to trick Charlemagne into leaving by promising to convert to christianity, but has no intention of fulfilling that promise (Childress, 1). The second betrayal - and the most important one in the story - is done on the story's main protagonist Roland by his stepfather Count Ganelon. The only reasoning Ganelon gives for his dislike of Roland is when he …show more content…

The Chanse was based off a battle that happened during the actual Charlemagne's venture into spain, but was not actually written until three-hundred years later in the 1100’s by an unknown author. (Charlemagne ; Owen, 34). The Song of Roland entered public view in nineteenth-century France - whom was desiring for a sense of national unity: “ … if the general public were still not captivated, the scholarly public certainly started to respond to the idea that Roland represented an important part of French history” (Divanna, 115). While what Count Ganelon did is certainly considered despicable by most moral standards but, from his viewpoint at least, Ganelon did not commit treason against King Charlemagne. This essay will attempt to prove that, and also will go over historical information regarding the actual conflict The Song of Roland was based off of, and also of its rediscovery and re-modernization by pre-modern

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